ABSTRACT Paul Hindemith
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: A MUTUAL INFLUENCE: SELECTED SOLO AND CHAMBER WORKS FOR CLARINET BY STUDENTS OF PAUL HINDEMITH Laura Dawn Armstrong, Doctor of Musical Arts, 2010 Directed by: Dr. Michael Votta School of Music Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) composed many solo and chamber works for clarinet, and most are standard works in the clarinet repertoire. It may be interesting to many clarinetists to know that many of his students have done the same. Many of these works are largely unknown to most clarinetists and would greatly add to their repertoire. The goal of this dissertation is to discuss some of these works written by his students, and to introduce these composers to clarinetists. While in no means does this imply that he was the only person they studied with, or that he controlled everything they ever wrote, this serves as a new way of looking at some more recent music that has been written for the clarinet. For the purpose of this dissertation, I avoided some of the more studied works such as Leonard Bernstein‟s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, or some of the more familiar works by Bernhard Heiden, or Norman Dello Joio. Although I chose to include chamber music, more than just clarinet and piano, I chose to limit this to two pieces. It does not take long upon listening and studying the music to discover that these works share many common traits. Many of the works use neo-classical forms, like those written by Hindemith, but many share similar harmonic structures. In other words, they sound like Hindemith. The works performed and discussed in this dissertation are the following: Violet Archer – Sonata for Flute, Clarinet in A, and Piano; Samuel Adler – Canto XIV (A Klezmer Fantasy for Clarinet); Howard Boatwright – Suite for Clarinet Alone; Arnold Cooke – Sonata in B-flat for Clarinet and Piano; Emma Lou Diemer - A Quiet, Lovely Piece for Clarinet and Piano; Alvin Etler – Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Lukas Foss – Three American Pieces; Harald Genzmer – Capriccio für Zwei Klarinetten, Fantasie für Klarinette, and Sonate für Klarinette und Klavier; Paul Hindemith – Concerto for Clarinet; Ulysses Kay – Pantomime Fantasy; Willson Osborne – Rhapsody for Clarinet; Alan Shulman – Rendezvous for Clarinet and Piano; Ruth Schonthal – The Bells of Sarajevo. A MUTUAL INFLUENCE: SELECTED SOLO AND CHAMBER WORKS FOR CLARINET BY STUDENTS OF PAUL HINDEMITH by Laura Dawn Armstrong Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts 2010 Advisory Committee: Professor Michael Votta, Chair Mr. Paul Cigan Professor Donna Hamilton Professor Mark Hill Mr. Edward Walters © Copyright by Laura Dawn Armstrong 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter 1: Dissertation Recital #1………………………………………………………... 7 Chapter 2: Dissertation Recital #2………………………………………………………. 15 Chapter 3: Dissertation Recital #3………………………………………………………. 22 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….. 35 APPENDICES Appendix A: Recital CD Track Listings………..………………………………. 36 Appendix B: Discography……………………………………………………….39 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….. 42 ii Introduction This dissertation will focus on clarinet music written by students of Paul Hindemith. Hindemith (1895 – 1963) was one of the most influential composers and teachers of the 20th century. Some of his most prominent students include Harald Genzmer, Arnold Cooke, and Samuel Adler. For the purpose of this dissertation, I selected works by composers who have listed in their biographies that they have studied with Hindemith, and these were presented in a series of three recitals. Some composers, such as Cooke and Genzmer, studied with Hindemith in Berlin for several years while other composers such as Lukas Foss and Adler studied with Hindemith in the United States for only a brief time. The music ranges from the neo-classical and conservative styles of Cooke and Genzmer through the contemporary and more avant garde styles of Ruth Schonthal and Samuel Adler. My goal is to investigate the degree to which Hindemith‟s influence as a teacher can be found in their works for clarinet. Hindemith taught at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik from 1927 to 1937, Yale University from 1940 to 1953, and the University of Zürich from 1949 to 1957.1 He also held other positions for a brief time at SUNY, Buffalo, Cornell University, Wells College, and the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. Some of the most talented composition students were drawn to study with him based on his fame as a composer, and his reputation as a teacher. He was a very demanding, strict, and critical teacher, but was very dedicated and matched his students‟ efforts with his own enthusiasm about their work. Geoffrey Skelton elaborates: 1 Biographical information taken from Giselher Schubert, “Hindemith, Paul,” in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/13053 (accessed September 3, 2009). 1 He was a remarkable teacher, but also, for all but the strongest, a dangerous one. Even a cursory glance through his educational books will reveal his talent for explaining things clearly and interestingly, mainly by the use of apt and striking metaphors. His pupils, both in Europe and in America, bear witness to the invigorating effect of his classes, to his unrelenting insistence in and involvement with each one of them individually. The danger lay in the fact that his personality was so forceful and his style of writing so very much his own that his pupils were tempted into copying him. All young American composers, Aaron Copland complained at the time Hindemith was teaching at Yale University, seemed to be writing Hindemithian music.2 At the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, Mass., Hindemith was “stern to the point of being callous.”3 Although the students were selected from the most talented and gifted young composers at the time, Hindemith was not impressed. In a letter written to his wife, Gertrude, he explains his teaching method and his students: Here I am of course a very “famous” teacher, and the pupils have already spread rumours of the many unexpected things I make them do. The company is unfortunately not outstanding, except for one small and very good emigrant boy from Germany [Lukas Foss]. During the first lessons there was some resistance, partly because of the unaccustomed work I was demanding, partly in consequence of the absolute lack of attention I paid to the existing scores of my patients. With suitable treatment, however, even the most obstinate began to soften, and yesterday, after I had ground them down by the well-tried method of a three-hour exercise in strict counterpoint on the blackboard, they are all now all extraordinarily well behaved, modest, and grateful.4 Stressing the importance of exercises in counterpoint and harmony was the basic principle of his teaching. For example, to be admitted into his theory and composition 2 Geoffrey Skelton, Paul Hindemith: The Man Behind the Music; A Biography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1975), 13. 3 Michael H. Kater, “Paul Hindemith: The Reluctant Emigré”, in Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York: Oxford UP, 2000), 47. 4 Hindemith to Gertrude Hindemith, Lenox, Mass., July 14, 1940, in Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Skelton (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995),167. 2 programs at Yale, students were required to pass his difficult written examination in harmony and counterpoint in which an excellent score was fifty percent.5 He treated the majority of his students as though they were beginners until they could prove their skills in these areas were superb. This approach led to his book, Unterweisung im Tonsatz (The Craft of Musical Composition), which outlines the methods he used with his students. While some critics believed that this style of teaching was too rigid, Hindemith felt that his was a less rigid method than the twelve-tone method used by his contemporary Arnold Schönberg.6 According to Skelton, “the twelve-tone system, as he [Hindemith] saw it…was consequently restrictive. What he was aiming at was a definition of tonal and intervallic relationships which could serve composers as a guide, enabling them to move, freely but logically, in the direction their ear indicated.”7 Hindemith suggests that Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors, or the architect his three dimensions. In composition, the triad or its direct extensions can never be avoided for more than a short time without confusing the listener…In the world of tones, the triad corresponds to the force of gravity. It serves as our constant guiding point, our unit of measure, and our goal, even in those sections of compositions which avoid it.8 Hindemith also insisted that his students learn to play and perform with as many instruments as possible, and he arranged them into groups which he called his „Robber 5 Luther Noss, Paul Hindemith in the United States (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 203. This was also the highest score that any applicant was awarded. 6 Skelton, Hindemith, 13. 7 Ibid. 8 Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition – Book I: Theoretical Part, trans. Arthur Mendel (New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1945), 22. 3 Band‟9 so they could all play through their own compositions. He himself was a violin and viola virtuoso, and could perform with the piano and the clarinet; he could also play most of the instruments for which he wrote solo sonatas.10 Clearly, his standards and expectations were very high. Overall, Hindemith‟s musical style can be expressed as neo-classical: his mature music was modern, but not avant garde, and he used traditional forms.